Saturday, November 20, 2010

As Wisconsin's football team is pummeling Michigan right now (sorry, Ann Arbor friends, colleagues and alums who care), the announcers have I think (at least) twice used a construction that is just impossible for me in the relevant situations: A player carrying the ball has had his forward progress stopped, an official blows the whistle to end the play and after that the ball comes loose. The comment:

The ball came out but the whistle blew.

I can only understand that statement as describing a significantly different situation, namely that the ball was fumbled and after that the whistle blew. In fact, the sentence is just odd, since if the ball came out, something else would have to happen to to trigger the whistle: it's a live ball.

To describe what actually happened, I would have to say:

The ball came out but the whistle had blown.

Do other people get the same reading? I didn't expect any variability here … I would expect this to be pretty stable.

The past perfect is long gone in Upper Midwestern dialects of English. In fact, when students are required to learn it in other languages (like French, FGerman, Dutch), they tell me it "sound redundant".

The past perfect is long gone in Upper Midwestern dialects of English. In fact, when students are required to learn it in other languages (like French, German, Dutch), they tell me it "sounds redundant".